


Not Just a River in Ancient Greece

by jazzypizzaz



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Canon Divergence, Episode: s01e06 Lethe, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 09:09:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17097722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jazzypizzaz/pseuds/jazzypizzaz
Summary: On the day of Michael's graduation ceremony, Amanda convinces Sarek to make a different decision.





	Not Just a River in Ancient Greece

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silver-thyla](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=silver-thyla).



> Off of a prompt by silver-thyla for Star Trek Secret Santa!!!
> 
> Lethe was the river of forgetfulness in the Greek underworld, and I'm pretending I'm clever.
> 
> For TOS purists, please ignore any blatant contradictions to canon regarding Vulcans... thanks :)

_The rush of stars, colorful lights of a nebula. A sunny Vulcan day and a sinking, terrible disappointment._

No, more than disappointment. 

_Lethe which turns into -- lethal. An ache in her chest where her heart is._

No, deeper than her heart.

Amanda jerks and twitches -- _almost, it’s almost clear, but_ \-- 

She’s pulled back to reality with a yank. Thin sheets tangle around her legs and her heart is pounding. That she’s also soaked in sweat isn’t an uncommon experience, no matter how they adjust the climate controls here on Vulcan, but everything else is cause for worry. She tries to remember -- _something important, a message to relay_ \-- but it slips away, too fast. She’s left with only the ghost. A great loss, somewhere between her ribs, something from another year. 

She whips her head around, disoriented -- _is he? he was lost and hurting and_ \-- no, he’s fine, right beside her on the bed as expected. She focuses on some of the more helpful Vulcan meditation techniques. Slow breaths. _It’s okay it’s okay._ Sarek is sleeping soundly on his back, soft snores he’d never admit to escaping from his nose. She smiles.

Still dark out and hours before the events of the day, a big day for their family. Graduation, acceptance perhaps at last.

A twinge of deja vu. She frowns.

“Sarek. My husband, dear,” she whispers, jostling him gently.

“Hmm? My wife, what is it?” Sarek blinks and sits up, looking coherent as ever, like he’d been awake this whole time.

“N-nothing,” Amanda says. Sarek arches an eyebrow, and there’s a rush back to her for a fleeting moment, a tendril hooking into her chest then retreating. “Don’t do it, today. You have to tell her, or you’ll always regret it, and one day it might kill you. Sarek, you have to listen.”

“I do not follow. You are making less sense than usual, my human wife.” Skeptical of her, yes always skeptical, but he waits and listens.

She shakes her head; it’s gone now. “I don’t know, but it seemed so important. It came to me --”

“Perhaps a bad dream. Have you been practicing the pre-bedtime meditation as we discussed--”

“No, it was more than a dream. A memory maybe. Not mine.” She rubs her temple. Watching her intently, his expression doesn’t change -- it rarely ever does of course -- but he holds out his fingers. She meets them with hers. She relaxes and smiles fondly. “You’re probably right.”

“I am sure it is nothing. Still, it is strange. If you were a Vulcan--”

“Oh, but I’m not.” She waves it off. What was once so vivid now seems far far away. The sun starts to peek through the drapes. “Just a silly human as always - no Vulcan psychic abilities here.”

He nods, slowly. “If that is all my wife, I will begin ablutions.” 

They rise to meet the morning. 

Vulcans may not feel such emotions, but where yesterday Amanda had nothing but excitement and pride for Michael’s impending acceptance today, there’s now a seedling of dread.

\-----

By afternoon the events of earlier have dissipated from Amanda’s mind like the morning fog (not that there’s enough water on Vulcan such waste). The ceremony is elegant. Beautiful, restrained: in short, very Vulcan. Amanda is the only one smiling in the sea of Vulcans around her, but she’s too filled with glory in the moment and how far Michael has come to hold back. 

Amanda remembers a scared lost little girl, all alone in the world and hurting fiercely, and Sarek with the idea, the question: “What if we --?” 

Look at Michael now. Straight-backed and proud. Incisive, intelligent, unequalled. Luminous in this moment, despite everything that came before. They were right, her and Sarek were, about humans and Vulcans.

Amanda beams at her ward -- her _daughter_ , even if the rest of them make the distinction -- and gifts her a book. Some gentle advice for her future development, while they wait for the inevitable good news --

But as Sarek walks up to join them, that feeling of dread, the urgency of this morning returns. His face is expressionless, but Amanda knows her husband.

The news of Michael’s rejection drops like Klingons onto Doctari Alpha. Like a bomb set off in the Learning Center.

An expected future wiped away in an instant.

Michael beats herself up for the rejection, taking it as her own failure. Allways the grace under pressure. Always fighting against herself for that Vulcan restraint.

Sarek, tight-lipped, doesn’t give her reason to believe otherwise. 

Amanda puts forward a protest and it’s brushed away. What else can she say?

Sarek and Michael set up plans for Starfleet, though Sarek makes it sound like a condemnation rather than an opportunity. 

Amanda isn’t so sure about that.

\-----

Dinner afterwards is efficient. Subdued in a funereal way, not subdued in the Vulcan celebratory way Amanda had expected for them. Michael leaves as soon as the last bite is finished, with the excuse that she must begin working on her Starfleet application at once, though Amanda dearly hopes she’ll at least take a moment for herself.

Amanda and Sarek are left alone together in the silence. (Spock is away at a class field study on Mars for astrophysics research. They had expected to enjoy this time focused on Michael.)

Amanda turns their earlier conversation over in her mind: 

_“Please, I want to go home,” Michael had said after hearing the news, and she looks sick, and Amanda felt it all, she felt her pain --_

_and then Sarek responded, “Humiliation is a human emotion,” and Amanda looked to him, and --_

There was something there, in Sarek. She had felt something from him.

Humiliation…

A human emotion. A weakness.

Vulcans may pride themselves on their ability to suppress all emotion, but Sarek has never been as good at that as he professes. A wife knows. She loves him for it. Usually.

Michael wasn’t the only one humiliated today. 

_An ache in Amanda’s chest, something that had long made its home near her heart was being pulled from her, slipping away -- across physical space, or -- across time --_

Amanda gasps and turns to Sarek.

“What I said...this morning...” She enunciates slowly -- in warning? in hesitation? -- breaking the silence of Sarek pouring over his evening studies while she had sat there ruminating.

Sarek arches a brow at the interruption. “Must you speak of this again, my wife?”

“Sarek, do you recall what… A memory came to me in the night, only… I think it was a premonition of the future. I’m not sure how or when, but one day, I remember now. It has something to do with your katra --”

Sarek’s katra -- tied to Amanda, t’hyla -- but in a very different and more direct way, tied to Michael.

Oh, Michael. Her daughter. _Their_ daughter. She deserves so much.

Sarek looks to Amanda -- no, he _glares_ , as much as he’d never admit. “Amanda. As you well know, we must forge actionable paths for Michael’s future now, and it would be irrelevant for you to linger on what was no more than a bad dream.”

“Darling, it _is_ relevant. You’re hiding something. There’s--” Amanda squints at Sarek, and -- _yes!_ \-- almost imperceptible, but he reacts, and she knows she’s right. “There’s something you’re not telling her.”

“You are being impertinent,” Sarek says, a little too quickly to be as devoid of anger as he intends. Defensive. “You are letting your emotions cloud your better judgement.”

“And am I the only one? You owe our daughter the truth, whatever that may be. And you owe yourself the strength to tell her. She is strong and capable and so much better than you give her credit for --”

“I _know_. She is everything that we have worked for -- The truth? Do not tell _me_ about the ward whose development I have overseen personally for the past _fifteen years_. I know what she will be capable of. Do not lecture me on truth or what I owe.”

Sarek’s tone was perfectly calm and even, but for a Vulcan this had been the equivalent of an explosive outburst.

Now Amanda’s the one to arch a sardonic eyebrow.

Sarek closes his eyes and reopens them. Reorienting. Calming. “I owe _you_ this, at least. The Vulcan Expeditionary Group committee, they gave me an impossible decision. Michael or Spock.”

“Oh, my husband! Oh.” Amanda’s face falls as she realizes what this implies.

“Only one of them, as my so-called ‘experiments’ to gain acceptance. And I chose my -- I chose _our_ child.”

She shakes her head at him sadly.

Silence for a moment. There’s nothing Amanda could say to comfort him now -- or to berate him. What’s done is done, and Sarek is fully aware of what it means for Michael.

Almost.

“You still have to tell her,” Amanda tries again, gently this time. “However painful it may be for her to hear, or for you to say--” 

“If it would be painful for either of us, then I would be a failure in my Vulcan teachings.”

“--however painful, it is illogical to obscure what might not be secret forever anyway. And if it is painful for her, then it means she is human,” Amanda pauses. “And for her, that is not a failure, you must know. It will be how she reacts to that emotion that determines her character.”

A long silence as they stare at each other. Detente. Amanda can almost see the proofs and arguments flitting through Sarek’s head.

“Let her make her own choices about what to do with knowledge,” she says.

Sarek sighs wearily, and for a moment Amanda catches a glimpse of what he might look like as an old man, something that with her human lifespan she will not live long enough to see.

He nods.

“It will be a mistake, but I will tell her.” He regards Amanda. “My wife.”

Amanda extends her fingers and Sarek meets them with his.

\---

That night, Amanda sleeps soundly.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure how this change would reverberate through Michael’s character arc??? She would know Sarek’s faith in her wasn’t shaken, but she would also know he chose Spock over her and that he didn’t fight more for her with the Committee. He wouldn’t have that same regret that blocks her from being able to save him in Lethe, but otherwise the Logic Extremists or whatever would be the same? *shrugs* feel free to speculate in the comments ^_^


End file.
